i think george orwell was a gentleman who basically*got it* in a higher degree than others and had a special type of intuition into the order of things. before delivering to the world *the animal farm * and his key-novel *1984*, he writes a book with a biographical touch to it, *coming up for air*.
the story is impressive in the manner in which a casual life of a casual character is made worthwhile(to the reader) by the analysis of a changing world and the conclusions drawn. there is nothing tragic in orwell about the fact that the past is like a childhood pleasure forever lost, but there is rather the lucid recognition of the fact that we learn nothing from it, thus mistakes are likely to be repeated. this is not unsual to put inside a character who took part to the First World War and who senses the arrival of the Second, but what is amazing is this book being written in 1938!
*War! I started thinking about it again. It's coming soon, that's certain. But who's afraid of war? That is to say, who's afraid of the bombs and the machine-guns? 'You are', you say. Yes, I am, and so's anybody who's ever seen them. But it isn't the war that matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while you sleep. And the procession of the posters with enormous faces. and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke. It's all going to happen. Or isn't it? Some days I know it's impossible, other days I know it's inevitable.*( Coming Up for Air, pp. 157)
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